Hello everybody!

This is just a reminder of my seminar presentation coming up this Friday, January 20th, 2017, covering the topic “Body” from the course book “Critical Terms for Media Studies”. As a quick summary, I will be looking at and inviting you all to explore the topics that surround media (as the collective singularity the authors have suggested it as being) and its relation to the body … human body.

Topics such as the body as a dynamic process, how the human body has been perceived throughout history, how we augment it, how it relates to posthumanism, dualities within and around the human body (a duality?), and as an agent of experience.

I will also present for our class discussion Bodyworlds: the travelling exposition that puts on display plastinated human bodies (among others).

Questions that I would like to explore (but certainly not limited to):

1. How do you perceive our view of the human body in this age of technology and science? Has it lost it’s importance/emphasis/significance?
2. What does posthumanism mean to you? Francesca Ferrando defines seven different definitions – please have a look at them and see if any of them satisfy your definition.
3. Is Bodyworlds: art? science? morally wrong? disrespectful? All of the above?

Lastly, I’m thinking of bringing sandwiches to the event. I have a recipe that I’ve been using for a couple of years now that has been a family hit when we go on outings (e.g., beach, parks) and consists of sandwich meats, cheeses (e.g., Swiss, Havarti, sharp cheddar), onions, mustard, horseradish, spinach, margarine. That said, if there are any food allergies, food limitations due to religious/moral beliefs, or  general dislikes, let me know and I’ll try and cater (slight pun intended) to that.

Addendum: I wish I would have thought of the six-million dollar man with Steve Austin – a TV show from the 1970s that I used to watch as a kid. I came across this picture on a Facebook group entitled “The vault of retro sci-fi 2.0” … quite topical on the part of the discussion on posthumanism.

A poster of Lee Majors as the six million dollar man, an early version of cyborg technology. 🙂